Effects of Left and Right Cerebral Lesions on the Naming Process

This experiment tested two major hypotheses: (1) Left hemisphere damage will have a more adverse effect on the naming process than on the ability to read and (2) increments in semantic interference will disrupt the performance of patients with left-hemisphere damage more than that of patients with right-hemisphere damage. Patients with left cerebral lesions consistently performed more poorly than the right-hemisphere-damage patients across all stimulus and response conditions. Aphasic lefts had more difficulty with naming than with reading. Hypothesis 2 was not supported. The findings are discussed with reference to the adequacy of the “verbal-nonverbal” dichotomy for describing functional differences between the left and right cerebral hemispheres.